1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for recycling a support material for an image-bearing member, at least part of the support material comprising a paper layer which comprises cellulose fibers and bears thereon hydrophobic images comprising a coloring agent and a heat-softening or thermofusible material, by peeling the hydrophobic images away from the paper layer.
2. Discussion of Background
Because of recent rapid development of office automation, a large quantity of papers for printers and copying machines has been used and consumed. This has caused the problems of the environmental disruption of the earth due to deforestation.
Conventionally, in order to recycle papers of this kind, printed ink is removed from the paper, and the ink-free paper is crushed and paper is made therefrom again. This has been an only method of recycling this kind of paper materials.
However, recently a method for recycling used copy papers by cleaning printed images off the surface of the copy paper has been developed, and examples of such a recycling method have been described, for instance, in the following references:
(1) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 4-67043
There is proposed a sheet-shaped support material for bearing images thereon. One side of this support material is surface-treated to make releasable, so that images can be formed on the support material and released therefrom repeatedly. This sheet is distinguished from a plain copy paper by putting a mark on the sheet. The above-mentioned support material, however, has the following drawbacks:
(a) This surface-treated sheet is a special paper, so that it is not easy to apply the sheet to the commonly used copying machines and printers.
(b) Therefore, it is difficult to use the above-mentioned surface-treated papers and plain copy papers and use them in the same copying machine.
(c) In view of the significance of recycling resources, duplex copies which bear images on both sides thereof are useful and will become very popular in the future. Under such circumstances, however, the method for recycling copy papers by applying a releasing agent to one side of a copy paper is neither effective nor useful.
(d) Since a releasing agent is applied to a support sheet, the image fixing performance thereof is poor as a matter of course.
(2) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications 1-101576 and 1-101577
A toner-image-bearing copy paper is immersed into an organic solvent in which a resin contained in the toner images formed on the copy paper is soluble, and is then subjected to an ultrasonic wave treatment, thereby removing toner images from the copy paper. This method, however, has the shortcomings that organic solvents used cause air pollution problems and are ignitable and toxic, accordingly not suitable for office or home use.
(3) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 1-297294
In this application, plastics, metals, papers into which liquids hardly penetrate, and ceramics are employed as the support materials for a toner-image-bearing member. Toner images formed on the support are heated through a thermofusible releasing member, whereby toner images are peeled from the support and the support is cleaned. In this method, however, a special erasable paper subjected to releasing treatment has to be used. Therefore, this method has the shortcoming that it cannot be applied to a large quantity of copy paper and printing paper now in general use.